


would you stay for just a while

by eldritch_beau



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, beach episode but make it midnight, cause hotboi is sensitive to sunlight, sad!essek nation this one's for you, scandalous hand-holding so be forewarned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22248022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritch_beau/pseuds/eldritch_beau
Summary: Essek sees the ocean for the first time.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 73
Kudos: 459





	would you stay for just a while

**Author's Note:**

> this is indulgent as fuck so I just went to my gut, i hope you enjoy :)

He has never been this far south before.

The wind is loud and his hair whips about his face in fervent disarray. Essek closes his eyes and takes a deep breath to calm himself. The air tastes different. Warm and salty and nothing like home. _Home._ He is so far away from home the impulse to teleport back to Roshona this very instant itches like a wound he can neither reach nor see. Worry clasps an iron-grip on his throat and Essek wills his shoulders to relax, to try and not overthink it. He knows the spells he will prepare tomorrow and in his head he has already run the simulations of all that he will do if the situation goes sideways, he knows nothing will be predictable and he knows none of it can be trusted. But he is here, isn’t he? Perhaps expendable... but important all the same.

It’s nothing big, just being in charge of the peace-treaty that is going to dictate the fate of two entire nations and the continent of Wildemount for ages to come. _What could ever go wrong?_

Essek lets out a haggard breath and opens his eyes.

In front of him stretches the endless sea, waves breaking against it’s shore in a gentle rhythm that might have soothed him if he didn’t dread so much what the next day brought. Or maybe if he were perhaps here under different circumstances, maybe out of his own choice. The sea feels infinite, the more he looks at the unreachable horizon where its dark waters kiss the star-studded sky that is now tinged with a soft pink that rises from where the two planes meet.

He has seen the sky a lot of times before, he has seen it in it’s perpetual night almost all his life and he has seen it in the harshness of light on the days of the Luxon’s ceremony. But this sky is different, it’s a gentle hue, a metamorphosis in motion as it touches the water and it’s colours dance on the waves, reflecting in _fascinating_ shades of blues and pink and every hues in between; quite like nothing he has ever seen before. Essek can only stare at the vastness of it.

“Couldn’t sleep?” the voice comes from somewhere behind and it almost startles him but he has learnt to school his face so as he turns, he notices Caleb standing next to a rock on the closer end of the beach, shifting his weight awkwardly and rubbing the side of his arm almost absent-mindedly. He gives Essek a smile that could mean _anything_ or nothing at all and the way his heart thuds in response is something Essek does not want to dwell on, not _now._ He can’t tell how long Caleb has been standing there and he almost wonders if Caleb had come looking for him ...no, he will not think about that. 

“ _Bitte_ , did i startle you?” Caleb says and it’s only then that Essek realizes he hadn’t responded yet.

“No, I am...,” Essek searches for the right word and the awareness of Caleb coming to stand next to him seems to drive whatever word he had been looking for further from his grasp. Until Caleb is standing close and yet not close enough but Essek has to look at the horizon to remind himself what he is here for and what he is _not._

So the drow settles on, “I am simply admiring the view.”

Caleb hums in response and his voice carries in the wind, with the whiff of woodsmoke and licorice and something that is perhaps distinctly Caleb. “It is rather beautiful” he says and Essek’s eyes are drawn to him if only for a moment, for the pink of the sky has gotten bright enough to illuminate the waters, to faintly illuminate Caleb’s face with a softness that perhaps only the promise of sunlight can afford. His hair catches too, strands blowing in the wind like threads of fire and Essek’s breath catches because he can only stare at Caleb. Stare at the blue of his eyes that stand to rival the blue of the sea stretching in its infinitude before them and somehow between them as well. It strikes Essek in that moment that he has never seen Caleb in such a light before.

“Yes, it is.” Essek says only after he looks away, only after he has composed his voice enough to not betray himself. But his voice still cracks and he can only pray that Caleb didn’t notice while hoping that maybe Caleb _did._

“Forgive me if this is crossing a line but…” Caleb starts to speak again but there’s a catch in his voice, a hesitant stumble before the wizard meets Essek’s eyes in earnest, “are you alright, Shadowhand?”

It is an unexpected question and Essek would like to say that _of course, of course he is alright_ . He would like to pull his chin up and look at Caleb down the end of his nose and tell him that of course _he is fine_ , in a tone that perhaps borders more on the defensive than on reassurance of any kind. But as he opens his mouth, only a long sigh falls from his lips and his shoulders slouch. He simply does not have the strength to lie to Caleb. Or maybe he doesn’t want to.

“I’m just tired.” he says instead, “what happens tomorrow will shape the relations between the Empire and the Dynasty for years to come. You….r group secured the possibility of these peace-talks, something that was seemingly impossible. We have either a true chance of stopping the war once and for all or this could all very well be a trap. And if somehow I fail tomorrow...” Essek shakes his head, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Caleb purses his lips, his brows furrowed in sympathy as he steps just a little bit closer to him, “if _we_ fail tomorrow.” he corrects gently and Essek feels a bubble of warmth take root in his chest as Caleb continues, “I cannot promise much, Essek but I can promise that we will do the most we can do to ensure that the negotiations go as... smoothly as possible. We will be with you.” and there’s that slight hesitance again before Caleb swallows nervously and, “ _I_ will be with you.”

Caleb holds Essek’s gaze just then, the intensity in the human’s eyes is a promise that Essek doesn’t want to hold Caleb to, is afraid to let himself hope that it might be what he _wants_ it to be— it’s all too much and it makes Essek’s heart beat erratically against his ribcage and there’s no water that can quench the dryness in his throat; no explanation he can give himself for the way Caleb’s eyes seem to search his and Essek has to look away, he wants to look away, but he can’t.

“Essek I…” Caleb starts to speak again, his gaze loaded with too much that seems to be hidden in the cracks of the little that he’s saying, “whatever happens tomorrow… I. I want you to be careful, _please._ ”

Oh. That sobers Essek up and it’s all he can do to give Caleb a small smile, “do not worry, Caleb. I will not hurt those who hail from your home, Luxon knows I do not enjoy—”

“That is not what I meant,” Caleb shakes his head, his voice sounding wrangled, “I want you to be careful because these people will hurt you, they _want_ to hurt you. And Ikithon, he will be there. I know it. And he will— he will — he will see you and he will see _me_ and he will _know_. He will know what I— ” Caleb stops abruptly and shakes his head, “then he will stop at nothing to hurt you.” A wretchedness overcomes Caleb’s face as he stares at Essek now, frowning and scratching his forearms almost violently and says, barely above a whisper, “please be careful, Herr Thelyss.”

Essek’s pulse is so loud in his ears that he isn’t sure he heard the man right. He couldn’t have, could he? But Caleb looks so distraught, eyes wild and drowning and what can Essek do but tentatively puts his hands on either sides of Caleb’s forearms to still this incessant scratching that Caleb is inflicting upon himself? And so what if his own hands are shaking as well, it’s not like Caleb would notice.

(would he?)

He _does._ Caleb’s eyes dart to where their Essek’s much cooler skin meets his own and Essek isn’t sure that Caleb heard him when he asked, “know what, Caleb?” because the human’s eyes stay glued to where Essek is holding him and Essek has half a mind to pull away (he almost does) but Caleb’s fingers are over his own now, holding him there, as if they are suspended in this moment and everything is very slow and very fast all at the same time.

“Know _what,_ Caleb?” Essek asks again, perhaps a little louder this time but his voice sounds just as feeble as the last and Caleb’s eyes snap to his and it’s blue so blue Essek could fall in it and keep falling he could drown in all these words that Caleb almost speaks into existence but then stops and swallows instead and Essek _wants_ , he wants to be right, maybe just this once he wants to have perhaps this one thing all for himself that isn’t about his job, maybe— 

“Know that I…” Caleb sounds so earnest it cuts like a knife, “I _care_ about you, Essek. A lot. And Ikithon when he sees you, he will— he will know either way,” Caleb shrugs, “so just… just stay close to me. Please.”

Essek feels like he has been stupefied, like anything he can say will either be inadequate or immoderate. “I will, I promise.” He responds, trying his damndest to not sound so lovesick that it hurts, “Caleb, I won’t let anything happen to you either.” he says, giving Caleb’s arm a small squeeze before letting go and pulling his own arms under his cloak, hiding himself away before Caleb can tell how badly he is shaking, how unbelievable this must be to him if he ever finds out how excessively Essek misinterprets their every interaction. 

“Good.” Caleb says, straightening his spine and looking everywhere but at Essek, “good that’s, uh.... Okay. I will… go now.” he says, making no attempt to move and Essek would be _lying_ if he said he didn’t feel a strange sense of loss at the thought of Caleb walking away like that, like… like…

“Wait” Essek hears someone say and is almost as surprised to realize it’s his own voice as he is to see his own shaking fingers rise from under his cloak that has always been a little too big for him and gently trace the warm skin along Caleb’s temple, tucking a particularly stubborn strand of curly auburn hair behind the wizard’s ear.

For a moment, neither of them can say anything at all. 

“You feel it too, don’t you? this...” Caleb finally speaks, “it’s not just me, right?”

Essek shakes his head, heart pounding like the time he had to run across the Lucid Bastion and be the first to tell the Queen that a beacon had been stolen. A similar dread curls at the base of his spine. What will Caleb do if he tells him? Even though he had tried, Essek has never been too subtle in hiding it but now, now that it’s looking him in the face, the graviturgist feels an equal impulse to run from it as he does to embrace it, to jump headfirst into this unknown— to _be known_ to someone for a change. And not just someone. Caleb.

“No,” he says, giving in to this feeling that he has been fighting for what feels like too long, “it isn’t just you.”

“But we _can’t,_ can we?” Caleb smiles sadly, a grief that lines his eyes and is too tangible for Essek to not feel it’s choking him too. 

“No, I don’t think we could.” He says. He knows why and he almost _almost_ doesn’t care. 

“I have thought about this for a long time, Herr Thelyss. Ikithon is after me and he will hurt anyone close to me just to get to me.” Caleb’s face is a mask of disgust and Essek feels a wretched need to take away that pain, “The Nein are already in danger because of me. And when he knows how important you are to me— how important you are to the Dynasty, he will not stop pursuing you… or worse, he—” Caleb shudders, “Besides, there’s the Bright Queen, being involved with me will jeopardize your position in court too, won’t it?”

“Ikithon doesn’t scare me,” Essek says (“he should,” Caleb interrupts but Essek continues anyway,) “and even if he did, fear of him couldn’t make me care for you any less.”

“It _should_ ,” Caleb says in a small voice, bowing his head, “and the Queen, she wasn’t too fond of you teaching me dunamancy…”

Essek isn’t surprised that Caleb had noted that. “No, she wasn’t.” Essek says, the corners of his mouth pulling into a brief smile at the memory of how the Queen had given Essek a pointed look, one that meant that he was already on very thin ice. He does not want to say this, does not want to belittle his own fondness for Caleb, but Caleb must know too, must know _why,_ “I wish I could Caleb, I really do. But I have worked so hard to get where I am today. Being the youngest in court is _difficult_ and being in the position of the Shadowhand, knowing every little thing being said about me and trying desperately to not get caught up in this tangle myself… I am already in a rough position in Court. If this peace treaty works out and they also find out that I am… _with_ you, they will question my loyalties and this whole peace endeavor will fall apart. I dont—” 

“I understand.” Caleb smiles and doesn’t break eye-contact as he brings Essek’s hand closer to his lips and plants the gentlest of kisses, barely more than a breath, on Essek’s knuckles, “I won’t have your integrity questioned because of me, Shadowhand. I won’t have your life dangled on a whim.”

And just like that, Caleb drops his hand too, pulling his own to his sides and nodding as he turns to leave but Essek _wants,_ even if it’s treacherous, he wants.

“Won’t you stay awhile, Caleb? Please?” Essek's hand hovers in the space between him and he waits, anticipating the kick of rejection that somehow never comes.

Caleb nods, looking just as relieved to have been asked to stay as Essek is that Caleb _chose_ to put his hand in his and it’s a different kind of warmth than the one that has settled in the air. Essek pulls Caleb to his side and it draws a big smile from the human, whose face seems to redden even more now, as they stand shoulder to shoulder, looking out across the sea. And for a while they’re both staring at the horizon, a comfortable sort of silence settled between them. The ocean is beautiful, so endless, a different kind of infinity than Essek is used to in his field of dunamancy… and to think the Nein had been _pirates_ on the horizon of this infinity. Essek can’t help but chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” Caleb asks, his voice close enough to his ear to make him shiver.

“I just remembered that Jester told me you were pirates. On these seas.” Essek raises his eyebrows in a mix of both admiration and fear, “Terrifying.”

Caleb draws back a bit, looking at Essek quizzically before nudging him with an elbow,“Shadowhand, is this your first time seeing the ocean?” 

Essek nods, “it is, yes.” he replies, “it’s... quite like nothing I expected.”

“Come on.” he feels the tug before he hears Caleb’s voice and he isn’t sure what it means as he sees Caleb pulling his own shoes off until the wizard’s trousers have been rolled up to his knees and he is barefeet.

“Caleb, what are you doing?”

“You know what I’m doing.” Caleb gestures with his eyes at the hem of Essek’s cloak, “your turn, Graviturgist. Unless you are afraid of water...?”

“I’m not.”

Caleb shrugs, taking a step towards the wet sand, “We could be dead tomorrow, Essek. We are allowed to indulge a little tonight.”

Maybe it’s the way Caleb was looking at him, or maybe it was the prospect of experiencing something he had never experienced before with someone he really wants to share something new with, but Essek does shrug off the mantle on the rocks against which Caleb rests his boots. Essek’s own footwear follows. 

Then the levitation spell drops.

And then, only then does Essek turn around to face Caleb.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting but it was perhaps not the sheer amount of glee that coloured Caleb’s face as the human ran an appreciative eye over Essek twice and tilted his head to a side with a shit-eating grin.

“You are shorter than me?”

“Draw a portrait, wizard it’ll last longer” Essek responds instead, raising his nose in the air as he walks to where Caleb stands inches away from where the water draws patterns on the sand. Caleb looks different from this angle, somewhat softer around the edges and it doesn’t help that his eyes are lit up so nicely in the light of this inbetween space between dark and dawn, doesn’t help that he is biting down on his lower-lip trying to hide a smile and looking at Essek the way Essek had always secretly wished that someone would look at him.

He steps into the water then, a little afraid but a little braver too. And Caleb is right there with him as the clear blue water caresses his feet with a comforting coolness and the sands shift from between his toes so quietly it feels like sinking; it feels a lot like sinking slowly and willingly and Caleb is holding his hand and sinking with him and this _feeling_ is a heady drug. Maybe it’s the water or maybe he is foolish or maybe he is bold or maybe he is both but Essek stands on his tiptoes, lets his fingers linger at the side of Caleb’s face, his arm on Caleb’s chest before leaning in and tilting his chin up and... Caleb meets him halfway, ducking just low enough to let Essek press his lips against his own in the gentlest of kisses. The wizard reciprocates in kind by pulling at Essek’s waist until they are chest-to-chest and Caleb is cradling Essek’s face in his hands and kissing him back and in the faint light of dawn Essek nurses a treacherous hope deep in the corner of his heart that he had insofar not permitted himself.

"What was that for?" Caleb asks, but his voice is lighter than before and Essek feels a personal kind of joy at having been the cause of Caleb's happiness.

“We could be dead tomorrow.” he says, “we are allowed to indulge a little tonight.”

“So what will we do, Herr Thelyss?” Caleb sighs and brushes his lips against the tip of Essek’s nose, “About this unspoken thing between us?”

“Maybe after” Essek offers, and it feels like baring his soul and exposing his soft underbelly, like it would be too foolish to even hope for anything beyond the tremendous hurdle that awaits them tomorrow but Essek has always been a little too foolish, perhaps a little too reckless, “after this is all settled and if we don’t die tomorrow, maybe when the trouble is over, well I never was so fond of this job anyway… perhaps we could find a way? Would you wait for me?”

“Yes.” Caleb interrupts and his shoulders relax visibly, pulling Essek closer and holding him tighter, his voice muffled against Essek’s hair, “I would like for us to have an _after_. I would like that with you.”

—

“Does it hurt?” Caleb asks as rays of red and orange starts to break over the horizon, dousing the entire expanse in a fiery fallacy of reds, painting the water too in an array of unbelievable colours. Maybe his eyes are starting to burn, but Essek can only stare at the sky now turning the distinct shade of Caleb’s hair.

“Not yet.” Essek answers, finally tearing his gaze towards the man who has his arms wrapped around Essek’s waist, his chin rested ever so insistently on Essek’s shoulder. “I’ve always wondered what the sunrise looks like” he says, holding Caleb’s hand warm and safe in his own, a fleeting fragment of permanence, of all that he wants but cannot have just yet. In that brief moment where the dark breaks into dawn, where Caleb is next to him, holding him, glowing in the faint hint of morning light and he can feel Caleb’s warmth so close to him, feel the sand shifting softly under his feet, the gentle coolness of the blue waves lapping at his ankles, Essek has _one_ moment of pure happiness, of weightlessness that is just his own. A moment that he wills himself to remember every detail of.

He dares another glance at Caleb who is looking at him too, beautiful and curious and glowing and it almost starts to hurt Essek’s vision, the way the light catches in his eyes, the way his hair whipped about in the wind… but the horizon is far, the sun hasn’t risen _yet._ Perhaps for this one single second suspended in eternity, Essek allows himself to love Caleb truly and fully, to love like there isn’t the weight of the whole continent riding on their shoulders, like they both wouldn’t just die tomorrow if it came to it. Like the world hasn’t woken up yet so it’s just the two of them and nothing else matters but this one single moment where Caleb is just Caleb, strong and steadfast and Essek is just Essek, the heavy mantle of duty dropped away and wading into unknown waters with someone he trusts, they are perhaps just in love, a romantic notion that makes Essek giddy as he looks at Caleb and yearns for more, for a future together, maybe, _would Caleb like that?_ It’s a heartbreaking kind of joy to see the same hope reflected back in Caleb’s blue, blue eyes.

He will wait. However long it takes to settle the peace-treaty, he will wait. And when those waters finally rest, he will perhaps give up the position of the Shadowhand, run away with Caleb and his adventuring party, it’s not like he hasn’t thought of it, it’s not like he doesn’t regard their ability to stay untethered to anything but each other with something approaching envy. Would they let him? Be a part of it, that is? Den Nein, imagine that. Maybe he is a fool for considering resigning from such an esteemed position in court instead of giving up on this unspoken thing he has with Caleb, this inexplicable sense of belonging he feels with the Nein. He will wait. And with the way Caleb is looking at him, Essek can almost hope that Caleb will wait for him too. 

Maybe it isn’t too late just yet.

There will be time.

—


End file.
